Unions. Whats Your Opinion?

[Ramo]

Oooh... whoop-te-doo! Since a non-union member can work in a union shop for a WHOLE MONTH, that means it is much different than a close shop! Because, as we all know, people really only work at a new job around a month or so anyway.

What bollocks!

The point, for the third and last time, is that workers get a chance to convince their fellow employees to not require membership to the union. I don't care if you don't think this is an important difference from closed shop, but it is a difference.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by paiktis22
if you want an example of why pirvatization is bad look at california.

If you want an example of why pretty much anything you believe at all about California and the energy industry is wrong, talk to MtG.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ramo

Oooh... whoop-te-doo! Since a non-union member can work in a union shop for a WHOLE MONTH, that means it is much different than a close shop! Because, as we all know, people really only work at a new job around a month or so anyway.

What bollocks!

The point, for the third and last time, is that workers get a chance to convince their fellow employees to not require membership to the union. I don't care if you don't think this is an important difference from closed shop, but it is a difference.

They can do that without actually working at the place.

[Ramo]

Hardly effectively. And they don't have direct influence if they're not working there.

[Mr. Harley]

Kucinich, listen to the tapes of the Enron traders and try to claim that was not unregulated free trade at it's worst. The shortages WERE manufactured, and the dumb f**** did it on recorded lines! Thank God for arrogance. Why do you think there are regulations on cartels? That is interfering with free trade, if a group of producers want to set prices together, unregulated free trade assumes someone will step in eventually and undersell them. It ignores convenient things like the power of the cartel to, for example, tell shippers that we will boycott you if you carry the upstarts goods. I repeat, and history is replete with examples, that unregulated free trade will almost inevitably produce abuses exactly like happened in California.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ramo
Hardly effectively. And they don't have direct influence if they're not working there.

They don't have direct influence if they DO work their either.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Kucinich, listen to the tapes of the Enron traders and try to claim that was not unregulated free trade at it's worst.

Sure. You see, I happen to believe MtG just a bit more. See JohnT's sig for why.

[Ramo]

They don't have direct influence if they DO work their either.

Actually, they DO. Under the NLRA, employees can petition for a deauthorization election to end the union shop.

[Mr. Harley]

What industry - the energy industry? Assuming that, is he an engineer, an MBA, an energy trader, lawyer, etc. Before you go with "believe", go looking for the tapes, they have to be able to be online somewhere (I know NPR played parts of them in the last couple of months so you can start there), and also look at the well-documented energy trading schemes pioneered (or is that borrowed) by Enron. Just because someone is part of Wall Street doesn't mean he isn't engaged in insider trading.

Now if you want to argue California set itself up so it was vulnerable, that is a different matter! That happened when the Republican governor let the energy lobbyists write the law, and the Democratic legislature let itself get sold a bill of goods; i.e. they got greedy and figured they would save the people all this money rather than look at the process set up by the deregulation. Plus decades of NIMBY, when the Californians wanted that energy while the pollution was downwind of them - as in adjacent states.

Add in the Bush adminstration appointees to the regulatory body whose name escapes me refusing to intervene, claiming there had been no market manipulation, and the final threads are cut out of the pockets of California businesses and consumers. Then there was Governor Davis, a man who made Gore look charismatic trying to fight industry and Bush adminstration spin (Carl Rover is a genius), making terrible misteps, and the public backlash help elect a semi-Republican governor. Which just goes to show you that the Bush administration has EXCELLENT domestic strategists.

Please, instead of quoting who "you believe" go and LISTEN to the evidence, and research the strategies of the Enron energy traders. While their depradations were not possible without all the other factors, they in the final analysis were the people ordering plants shut down and manufacturing artificial energy outages to spike the prices. EVIDENCE and FACTS versus opinions.

edit: verbs, puntuation, and articles - f****d up the first paragraph quite badly

[Imran Siddiqui]

since your posts deal with 90% plus with what's wrong with unions, and your examples are almost all about corrupt and/or bad union practices, it is reasonable for Agathon to interpt you as anti-union

Seeing as Agathon and others (such as yourself) make posts about how wonderful and amazing unions are it is reasonable for me to interpret that as saying unions **** don't stink and thus demonstrate that unions aren't always the wonderful and amazing God's gift thing that you people are portraying.

It is especially gaulling to here this 'unions are perfect line' when there are unions run by the mafia, unions which take pension money, unions which simply don't care.

While I realize that you may argue that is not the choice you are implying, that is what your scenario boils down to.

Another one of these . For being totally against the "You're with us or against us" rhetoric of Bush, the left seems to adopt it very readily. It seems nuance is a lost art on that side of the spectrum as well.

Extremist free marketers produce the California energy fiasco - which by any account was an UNREGULATED free market

An unregulated free market which was under strong regulations by the state (especially in new plant openings). Now that's a trip!

I'll allow with Adam Smith of MtG to expound on how utterly wrong and ridiculous this notion of California being a unregulated free market is .

If that's an unregulated free market these days then Friedrich Hayek is rolling over in his grave!

[Imran Siddiqui]

The point, for the third and last time, is that workers get a chance to convince their fellow employees to not require membership to the union. I don't care if you don't think this is an important difference from closed shop, but it is a difference.

And my point is for the umpteenth time, it's a very minor difference and they are basically the SAME DAMNED THING!

[Ramo]

"I don't care if you don't think this is an important difference from closed shop."

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

It is especially gaulling to here this 'unions are perfect line' when there are unions run by the mafia, unions which take pension money, unions which simply don't care.

In two of those three examples, the "union" would be acting directly against the interests of its members. Ipso facto, it is no longer a union.

Is an army still an army if it refuses to obey any orders and dedicates itself to anarchic pacifism and free expression?

[Dis]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

since your posts deal with 90% plus with what's wrong with unions, and your examples are almost all about corrupt and/or bad union practices, it is reasonable for Agathon to interpt you as anti-union

Seeing as Agathon and others (such as yourself) make posts about how wonderful and amazing unions are it is reasonable for me to interpret that as saying unions **** don't stink and thus demonstrate that unions aren't always the wonderful and amazing God's gift thing that you people are portraying.

It is especially gaulling to here this 'unions are perfect line' when there are unions run by the mafia, unions which take pension money, unions which simply don't care.

While I realize that you may argue that is not the choice you are implying, that is what your scenario boils down to.

Another one of these . For being totally against the "You're with us or against us" rhetoric of Bush, the left seems to adopt it very readily. It seems nuance is a lost art on that side of the spectrum as well.

Extremist free marketers produce the California energy fiasco - which by any account was an UNREGULATED free market

An unregulated free market which was under strong regulations by the state (especially in new plant openings). Now that's a trip!

I'll allow with Adam Smith of MtG to expound on how utterly wrong and ridiculous this notion of California being a unregulated free market is .

If that's an unregulated free market these days then Friedrich Hayek is rolling over in his grave!

you may not believe this, but the mafia has been kicked out of my city. I'm certain of this.

[Tingkai]

And they'll kill anyone who says otherwise.